News archive 2013

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva today concluded his official visit to the West African region in Togo, where he congratulated President Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé on progress made by the country in the fight against hunger.

FAO is supporting farming families in northern Benin who lost crops, livestock and fishing grounds when the Niger River overran its banks in August, just as many villagers were only barely getting back on their feet from the last floods in 2012.

Sound water management holds the key to building resilience in Africa's Sahel and can free rural communities from the vicious cycle of weather-related food security crises that have plagued the region over recent years.

The time has come to break the vicious circle of crises in Africa's Sahel by proactively building up the ability of pastoralist and rural communities to weather drought and other shocks, rather than merely helping them recover from disaster after the fact.

Governments from Africa’s main timber producing countries, together with timber industry representatives and civil society organizations agreed to jointly combat illegal timber trade in the Congo Basin, FAO said today following an international wood industry meeting in Brazzaville.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have joined forces to promote viable forestry investment and innovation in the Russian Federation’s Far East based on sustainable use of forest resources.